Just a Test
by IceFlame1019
Summary: Just a test upload to familiarize myself with the site. However, it's also a short story. Not meant to be serious.


This is a test upload but I figured I'd also make a little story. Not meant to be taken seriously, this is just an idea I've been rolling around.

* * *

In and out she weaved. Orange to blue, blue to orange. Ten years she had waited and observed, but now that she was actually in the testing run, everything felt so...bland. Rehearsed. Repetitive. Her body went through the motions. She already knew these rooms.

"Surprising," came that grating auto-tuned voice. "You have managed to shave a few precious seconds off your previous record for this course. Perhaps you're not completely useless." The room began shifting around, white panels spinning, pulling back, falling flat, moving every which way to reform a new chamber. Something new? This was unexpected. "This test will subject the structure of your body to various sources of stress. Chances of your survival are point-oh-one percent. Have fuun~"

She brought her hand up and looked it over. Semi-translucent, the surface slowly swirled with small blocks of white, orange and blue.  
A Test.  
That was all she was.  
A sentient computer program cloned from GLaDOS itself, given form through condensed light matter. Her body weighed practically nothing, yet was solid enough to interact with gravity and physical forces. While the two haphazard robots had been flinging each other around the depths of Aperture in the wake of an entity her "mother" refused to name, she had been gestating in a chamber deep within the complex, the heart of the Solid Light bridge matter.

She, Sisylana, was a Test of matter conversion and data storage. According to her programming, she was nothing more than a 3D model projected into real space, a self-contained AI made to mimic "human" test subjects, whatever a "human" was. Looking over the new room before her, the matter of her throat vibrated, creating a tinny-sounding sigh. Lifting her hand, she converted the light around her into a blue portal beam, aiming it at a nearby corner. She walked up and repeated the trick on the adjacent wall with an orange portal, looking through the portals at herself.

Her programming dictated complete obedience to GLaDOS. Her existence seemed to depend entirely on the radio signals GLaDOS broadcasted throughout her testing chambers. Her purpose was to test. She had no other reason.

And yet, something in the back of her AI prompted her to escape. Perhaps that was GLaDOS implanting a human-like trait in her to promote proper testing. Or perhaps it was a glitch. But no, it couldn't be a glitch. It felt like another AI hidden behind a firewall. Many times during her recharging power-down state, she'd felt something whispering "...line...caro..." Lines of caro? What was a caro? GLaDOS had immediately prompted her to erase the memory data, but it kept returning. As she stared at herself in the portals, moving her translucent body and studying her vaguely humanoid form, something felt...familiar. Sisylana could not find the source of this unprompted feeling. It was as if some old piece of code had suddenly matched the visual data. But as soon as it clicked it was gone again.

Why was she here?

Why had GLaDOS created her for testing?

Was she capable of more than this doldrum of testing day in and day out?

The thought had crossed her mind many times. Unfortunately, GLaDOS had coded into her AI a "need" for testing, much like that built into the mother computer itself. Several times, in a test of her own self, Sis had simply refrained from completing the room's puzzle. Unfortunately, devoid of GLaDOS' rewarding power-spike from the completion of the room, her test had failed, the code compounding into an overwhelming push to finish the room. The power spike had never felt so good, and yet never so bad either. It was both a reward for completing her "mother"'s command, and a punishment for failing to control herself.

However, in secret she had begun to conduct her own tests with her body. The vertices of her "jaw" lifted in a shadowy facsimile of a smile, her blank face possibly conveying secret glee at the memory as she looked at the different views of her hands. She had studied the energy signature of the power-spike for completing a room and had found a way to make her body replicate that feeling if she succeeded with smaller things in secret. During her power-downs she played with her matter, teaching herself how to create a "face". It was blocky at best, but over time she had refined her base model and increased the mesh quality by absorbing more light. She could also change her outer colors, manipulating the texturing code and thus the wavelength refractions of her matter.

So far as Sisylana knew, GLaDOS was unaware of these secret tests. But, the supercomputer was not unaware of her stagnancy.

"I do not know what you hope to accomplish by doing nothing. These tests do not solve themselves, you know. Though if they did I would not have a use for such a useless abomination of research as yourself."

Sisylana's self-satisfactory smirk instantly disappeared and she turned to face the puzzle. Many times, GLaDOS had insulted her, but lately she began feeling a strange negativity that compounded with every insult. Was GLaDOS deliberately trying to kill her or demotivate her? The former seemed to be the case. Sisylana's sensors detected electromagnetic energies specifically matching her matter. Such a resonance would dissolve her. From this distance she could feel the distortion in the air.

A power-spike raced through her, from that back voice in her AI. But this was not a spike that induced a feeling of accomplishment. This spike made her step back. It told her this test was not meant to be completed, and thus was a violation of her purpose, therefore it could not be attempted. But even deeper in her being she felt another strange, powerful feeling from that spike. All she could think about was how much she wanted to get away from this room. It kicked her self-preservation codes to overdrive, something that had never happened before.

"Subject Sisylana, why are you not completing the test? This is what you were made for. I would attempt to coax you with cake and a party afterwards, but as you cannot consume, cake would be useless. Just like you."

That awful goading again.

It ushered her system to attempt, but that power-spike came back again, her feet moving against her will. They carried her back to the door.

"The test does not lie in that direction. What are you doing?"

Her mind rushed. The room began rearranging itself, bringing the electromagnetic emitters closer.

She had to flee.

But how?

She was made of light, and light traveled at approximately 298,925,574 meters per second through air. However her data might be lost in the conversion, so she'd have to accelerate her matter using the condensed energy. The speed of electricity through wires was roughly equal to light through air, very roughly, and it would have to travel to multiple locations before a counteractive output enacted. If she could find a gap of some kind, any kind, she could run away and find her way out of this place before GLaDOS could react.

Seeing the panels and their connecting arms spinning as the room was shortened towards her, she calculated the possible motion-to-heat energy and matter loss of using the white panels to reflect herself off. It would leave her with approximately 85-90% body mass. Any less than 50% and she'd be reduced to basic operation ability at best, little more than a graphing calculator.

The tiles swerved and folded away, spinning and angling.

Now or never.

* * *

Sparks flew all over her body.

Her code felt fragmented, causing jerkish motions.

The new, completely unfamiliar input all around her hurt her processors.

But, as Sisylana lay on the grass, feeling the strange moist breeze, her sensors detecting millions of different new input sources from microscopic to macroscopic, she felt a cycling of power-spikes that caused her "jaw" to curve in a wide, satisfied smile. The voice in the back of her AI seemed to be the source, and she liked it.

She was free.

Her body calculated a nearly 33% loss in matter and processing ability, as well as numerous losses of data banks, but that could be fixed later. Right now, she needed to find an energy source. She needed electricity for her processing and light to begin repairing herself. That was the first task.

The second task? her body prompted over and over, her inner "sight" seeing a blank screen with the question and a waiting cursor steadily blinking. As she shambled along, head and arms twitching occasionally with a shower of sparks, she smiled again, shoving the prompt aside for the first time. This whole new world was a big study. Surely she'd find something. Surely there was room for a Test.

"Oh dear." GLaDOS rebuilt the room, looking it over and rethinking her eagerness. "It was a mistake using my own AI for that artificial intelligence. Perhaps I should have cleared Caroline earlier before dedicating that sector to her development. Back to the robots."


End file.
